Ride to the hills

I finally made it out for my ride up to and around Kalamunda and the hills area. It's been a while since i've really ridden anywhere so it was a good exercise for me and the bike.

I enjoyed myself thoroughly. Nothing too notable aside from the awesome autumn weather which has finally arrived, and that i got a taste of how low i'm capable of cornering when i'm too busy looking where i'm going to freak out. There was a mad Camry driver tailing me all the way to my designated turnoff, and determined not to be cowed by it, i downshifted and gunned into the corner with my foot on the rear brake for control.

I'd sorely misjudged how tight a turn it was, because for a split second i found myself looking at the center divider while turning, and then i was snapping my head around to see where the road actually went. In all this i was still throttling, and before i knew it, the bike had swept in and down into the pinhead corner and out again.

I felt like a hero. You have no idea. Whoa.

Only after i'd ridden away did my brain pull all the pieces together, and produce a big exclamation mark with "holy crap" in front of it.

Heh.

I've been trying to cultivate good visual skills as espoused by this article here, and have also found that looking far ahead to where i want to be is very good for my cornering stability and confidence at speed. The above incident left no doubt that you are where you look!

*

What makes this an even better day is that one of the 2 new (second hand, but new to me) lenses i bought arrived today:


Nikkor 35-70mm f/2.8D AF

I brought the camera and new lens along to take some photos, but as it turns out, i was having so much fun i forgot all about it. However, not to be dampened, i stopped near home to take unexciting bike pictures:



2 things to react to:

1. Damn it's SHARP
2. Look at that contrast!!!!!!

Longing (otherwise known as "fat hope")

Had i anything in the world to choose from, this would be my one stop shop:

http://www.nationalgeographicexpeditions.com/

How brilliant is

... this ad on Scifi.com (seen while trawling though all available tidbits for Season 3 of Battlestar Galactica, and other random info).

The reimagined Battlestar Galactica is an amazing show. I’d go on about how complex and multi-layered and more-than-sci-fi it is, but there are others who do a much better job.

I’m hooked. Having obsessively finished Seasons 1 & 2, i’m on the edge of my seat for Season 3. In the opinion of someone who until 24 and BSG, hadn’t watched TV for many years, television seems to be getting a whole lot better.

A new place to live

“Character home” is a nice way of describing an old house built long ago. In the case of the place we moved into the weekend before last, “long ago” would be circa 1950. We’ve gotten so practised at shifting, we did it in 2 days flat this time around, just the two of us and a borrowed trailer.

I had my apprehensions about moving into an old house. I think flowered wallpaper and light fittings, taps and hinges that don’t work. I think dingy and drafty, creaky and overgrown with weeds. I think it’d be someplace where everyday living would be a battle, because i just don’t know how to improve a home and coax it to my desired configuration the way Princess can.

In the last 7 years i’ve lived in at least 7 different places (i’ve lost count by now), and it’s always been a case of me/us surrendering to the place’s idiosyncracies, rather than the other way around.

But as i have discovered over the last 4 days of moving, my doubts couldn’t be further from wrong. The house is old and rather quaint, yes, faux chandellier light fittings, ornate ceilings and all, but everything works beautifully, and while we had a bit of a drama flushing fat black spiders from the seperate laundry area, moving in was otherwise a charm. The interior is spacious and as i discovered, full of workable corners and cabinets and places to put things. The only flowered paper in sight is what the last tenant used to line the cabinets and drawers, which stays nicely out of sight! It’s the first time i’ve ever lived someplace with wooden floorboards, and they are wonderful on the feet and the eardrums - they make piano music especially, sound like the instrument itself is in the room.

Far from being at odds with the character of the place, as we thought, we are finding that it suits us quite well. A large part of this owes to the fact that this house, unlike all the previous, modern ones we’ve lived in, appears to have been built for the practicality of everyday living, rather than to impress on one’s sense of aesthetic. Plenty of leeway for furniture and odds and ends and after all is said and done, there is still a place for us to put our feet up and look out the window at the 180° view of the city skyline (which we will be losing shortly as soon as the people constructing in front put up their 2nd storey).

And importantly, there’s plenty of workspace for car-related actvity, something i never thought we’d find, especially so close to the CBD.

This was going to be our last move in a while, whether or not we found a good place, so i’m glad we are this well situated. Neither Mr C nor i have the energy to up and move every year any longer. Plus, when moving is such a priority, you start to realise that your entire life pretty much revolves around the surprisingly long and involved process of finding somewhere to live. Personal plans and long-term goals are put constantly on hold because moving upsets all sorts of clocks, rhythms and essential stability. It starts to seem kind of pointless after a while.

We’ve done the whole living by the beach thing. It’s everything it’s cracked up to be and more, but it was wasted on us, as we’re distinctly not beach people. The river surrounds are more our speed/atmosphere.

Snatching brief moments to read while the sun sent rainbows dancing in the room through the prismed window panes, it certainly seemed like i could relax and forget about being poised to bolt for a while. There is an ineffable quality to the place that just feels like home.

*

Due to the difficulties i’m having with telecommunications at the moment, posting will continue to be non-existent for the next 2 weeks at least, until i get the internet back at home. I am experiencing major withdrawals.

(Another reason i’m over the moving thing: every single time we’ve shifted, i’ve always had massive difficulties with either Telstra or my ISP. A month to get your phone and internet up and running properly stops being amusing when it happens all the time)

Remembering the Serf

Events of official remembrance for the Serf are over. Life persists. I have found myself thinking about a lot relating to him for the last week, tidying stuff up on this end. We rearranged the house some to occupy more of the space that is suddenly empty - reorganized the shelving, a little bit of the furniture, occupied his old workroom with the husband’s bits and bobs of equipment.

D and his family had cleared most of his belongings, leaving only the furniture and odds and ends for us to use. The Serf lived fairly simply, but even so, the paperwork involved in the 101 facets of life still is considerable.

In the 2 weeks that D was here we watched her organize, administrate, marshall and generally manage everything and everyone involved. Incredible woman, that. Much love to her family, who in addition to providing support, strength and lots of humour, also plied us hungry young-uns with the kind of food we’d probably never learn to produce ourselves.

D very kindly sorted as much of his more personal things as she could, like aforementioned toothbrush/-paste etc, so that we were left with the more general-use items to decide on.

I’ve never been one to hesitate with throwing stuff away. Like the Serf himself, i prefer travelling and living light; it is a requirement of keeping my sanity intact (the big, thirsty beast that is our vehicle being an exception. And the Patrol itself is a spartan creature.). However of everything that i’ve appropriated or gotten rid of, i’m finding myself reluctant to remove the most insignificant item of all - his coffee mug. The Serf had one of those plastic insulated coffee mugs he’d swiped from somewhere, that he was quite attached to. Neither of us are inclined to use it, given the number of coffee mugs that we already have, but as the husband said “But that was his favourite mug! You can’t just throw it way.”

The Serf’s passing is having a funny, undefined effect on me. I’ve never lost anyone close to me before, and truth be told, my brain is still confused. He wasn’t close like family, or my handful of old friends. Until i met him last October, he was another faceless blogger from the motherland. But then he came to live with us. It effectively made us a strange almost-family unit - three people that fed regularly together and found some bond because of it, even if our lives were completely seperate otherwise. And that made the difference.

It’s the smallest things that get to you. Now i know why people say children don’t understand death. This quarter-lifer has yet to figure it out.

And the fat blue mug stays where it is for now, in applied memory.

The passing of the Serf

Take my love, take my land
Take me where I cannot stand
I don’t care, I’m still free
You can’t take the sky from me

I was going to avoid this altogether, but the emails have started, and so i will say my piece.

Yes it’s true. The Singapore Serf has left us.

To be clinical about it, he was found deceased in his room on Monday morning. The autopsy was inconclusive.

It has sunk in somewhat, that our late housemate really is gone. But it’s the little things that bring back the moments of disbelief. His toothbrush and paste still sitting neatly atop the soap dish in the shower. His boots lined up against the wall on by the front door. The wonky smell of the exhaust of his little Ford Fiesta.

The memory of him popping his head around the open bathroom door in one morning, while i was cleaning and cursing at a smidge of algae in the shower stall, grinning and saying “Guess what i have?”

And pulled out a new shower curtain from behind his back (he knew how to get on my soft side, he did). He’d gone to Ikea in between waking up and gotten a new shower curtain, half-seriously apologizing for getting the same design because “i don’t like change.”

How he tried very hard to be all nochalant when it became quite clear the husband and i were quite, quite taken with his fiance.

How healthy eating was generally against his philosophy, but he’d wolf up the piles of veggies i generally feed us all and wave my spatula at the boys to emphasize my expectation that they finish every last morsel of green. I don’t think he took my so-you-don’t-get-scurvy admonishment to heart, but he was always glad to be fed.

It’s the small things. I didn’t know the Serf very well, certainly not as well as his friends. All i did was live with him, and i must say he was a dream housemate, but you get to know people’s funny little sides when you see them day in and day out. He was my devil’s advocate on the whole motorcycle issue. He was looking forward to when i finally got mine, so he could feel that particular wind in his hair.

We’d started to tease him in the last few months, about getting a little pink car (D’s favourite color) when his current little green one gave out on him. I guess we won’t find out if the pink bit eventuates.

He will be missed.

I will ask that you direct any queries to Calamari For Thought, if you absolutely have to enquire privately, or friends/family if you know them personally. It doesn’t matter how much correspondence between you and the Serf you forward to me to prove that you’re not a troll. You’re not going to get any more information than you’ll read here (especially if you’re going to be rude. Fer cryin’ out loud people, it doesn’t hurt to have some bloody manners), out of respect for family and friends, who are going through an intensely difficult time right now.

Requiescat in pace.

It Ain't Easy being a girl

The one thing about going out with Princess, is that all she has to do is walk up to the bar, and we all get discounted or free drinks for being privileged enough to breathe the same air she does. Being flanked by Supermodel on one side and Sexy Career Woman on the other only exacerbates the whole panting-male-fool syndrome.

I’ve got an inordinate number of hot women in my life, personally and now professionally (hate me fellas, hate me). Instead of some of this feminine magic rubbing off though, it would seem that the reverse is happening: i’m becoming more of a little boy than ever. Princess is confident in this reversing once i’ve really gotten into the whole corporate culture thing at my current place of employment (assuming they don’t kick me out sometime in these 3 months of probation), and am obliged to want to look good and act the way i should, but we’ll see. I react to my social insecurities with defiance for the most part. If i’m troubled by something i’m not and/or want to be, i go out of my way to flaunt the disparity between fantasy and reality - “look at me! i’m a freak and lovin it!” I’ve done it so much it’s become something i’ve actually learnt to enjoy.

It’s delightful though, sitting across the girls and taking in the magic of long, flowing hair, that distinct badge of desirable womanness; the lazy, elegant motion of slim, graceful fingers (no knotty, battered claws here) articulating nuance and emphasis. Voices brimming with that secret ken an outsider would probably name charm. They make being a girl look so easy, so absolutely natural, when some of us know it to be otherwise. Time and effort, long-term dedication go into that sort of girlness that has men begging to lick their toes. It’s a confounding mix of natural emphasis, cultivated attitude and of course, that x-factor that no amount of money can buy. Thinking on it over a drink or three just makes it all more confounding, rather than easier, as a lot of things appear to be when one is swinging high on 37.5% of liquid confidence.

Girls.